Author: Solihull Heritage & Local Studies

Solihull Council's Heritage & Local Studies Service. Find us on the first floor of The Core Library, Solihull.

13th August 1916

35-year-old Private Arthur Percival Huggins was killed in action on 13th August 1916 serving with the 11th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was the youngest of five children (three boys, two girls) and was born in Smethwick, Staffordshire in 1879, although his older siblings were all born in Alvechurch and Redditch, Worcestershire.

By 1881, the family had moved to Harborne, Birmingham, where their father, Richard, was working as a ledger clerk. Ten years later, the family was in Derby and everyone apart from Arthur was still in the city in 1901. Arthur seems to have been boarding in Manchester whilst working as an assurance clerk.

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9th August 1916

Private Arthur Barnwell died on 9th August 1916 whilst serving with the 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment. He was born at Meriden Union Workhouse in 1895 and baptised at Meriden parish church. His parents, William Barnwell and Kathleen Capewell, had married at Berkswell on 5th November 1889. William was a labourer and Kathleen a servant.

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8th August 1916

Rifleman Horace Frederick Cooke and Rifleman William John Hextall, both died on 8th August 1916 whilst serving with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Both are buried in Essex Farm Cemetery and neither is commemorated locally as far as we know, as they had both moved out of the area before enlisting.

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6th August 1916

Rifleman Frederick John Doughty was killed in action on 6th August 1916, serving with the 13th Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He was born in Bishop’s Tachbrook, Warwickshire in 1889 and was the eldest of the two children on parents, Frederick (a gardener at the time of his son’s baptism) and Emma (née Eels) who had married in Coventry in 1888. His younger sister, Elsie, was born on 28th December 1894.

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1st August 1916

23-year-old Reginald Milnes Blakemore died of wounds at no. 36 Casualty Clearing Station, France on 1st August 1916, whilst serving as a Private with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was born in Knowle on 8th August 1893 and was the third of the four children (three sons, one daughter) of parents George and Catherine. The couple’s three sons were all given Catherine’s maiden name, Milnes, as their middle name.

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30th July 1916

Four local men serving with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment are known to have died on 30th July 1916 whilst on active service; Olton resident, Private William Dobson, 14th Battalion; Private Howard John Hutchinson, formerly of Shirley, (14th Battalion); Private William John Lawley of Shirley (10th Battalion) and Solihull resident, Lance Corporal John Manning (14th Battalion). Also killed was Meriden’s Lieutenant Reginald Ernest Melly, The King’s (Liverpool Regiment).  Four of them have no known grave and are commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. Private Hutchinson was also recorded on the Thiepval Memorial but is now buried at the London Cemetery and Extension, Longueval.

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29th July 1916

Lance Corporal Peter Thompson, of Chadwick End, was killed in action on 29th July 1916 serving with the 10th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment). He was born in Chadwick End on 19th October 1886 and baptised at Temple Balsall on 12th December 1886. His parents were William (a labourer from Knowle) and Hannah (née Woodcock, born in Baddesley Clinton). They had married in 1873 and initially seem to have set up home in Birmingham, moving from Bordesley to Harborne between 1878 and 1881. They lived in Chadwick End from at least 1886 until 1911 and had five children of whom two had died by 1911.

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28th July 1916

Oxfordshire-born Rifleman George Savage was killed in action on 28th July 1916 serving with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Born in Hook Norton in 1895, George was the third of six children born to parents John Embra Savage and his wife, Jane (née Radbourn). The couple’s sixth child, Hilda Annie, was born towards the end of 1904, the same year that her mother died so it seems likely that Jane died in childbirth. Hilda died early in 1905.

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27th July 1916

18-year-old Private Clarence Alfred Sinclair Smith died on 27th July 1916, serving as a Private with “B” Company, 16th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was born in Knowle on 27th June 1898, and baptised at Knowle parish church on 14th August 1898. His father, Alfred, was listed as an insurance agent and the family was living at Kenilworth Road, Knowle.

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27th July 1916

On 27th July 1916, two local men lost their lives whilst serving in France. Private William Webb, from Hockley Heath, serving with 17th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, and Private Walter Henry Percival Wright, from Shirley, serving with 16th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment (3rd Birmingham Pals).

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